


The Next Part of Your Story

by cher



Category: Die unendliche Geschichte | Neverending Story - Michael Ende, Murder She Wrote
Genre: Gen, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 14:46:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/pseuds/cher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is a much stronger story thanks to my very helpful beta Aris_TGD. Thanks also to the_rck for reading over my Murder, She Wrote side of things.</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Next Part of Your Story

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosencrantz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosencrantz/gifts).



> This is a much stronger story thanks to my very helpful beta Aris_TGD. Thanks also to the_rck for reading over my Murder, She Wrote side of things.

It doesn’t matter how you came to find this story, reader. If you borrowed it or stole it or bought it with your own money, or if you found it one day and you have never known how it got onto your bookshelf or your reading screen - that is all right. This story is your story, and you have every right in the world to read it.

Here is something that has been known only to storytellers, since they dreamed their first dreams and told their stories to quiet listeners in campfire shadows. Fantastica is a real place, and anyone can go there.

There is only one thing you must do, reader. You must care. Any kind of caring will do. You might care for your family or your friends or your whole world, or you might care for nothing else at all but your dog. You might even care for other people in stories. You can start as small as you like and Fantastica will open to you. But if you stop caring, then you may find your way to the City of the Old Emperors, and become one of the pernicious lies in the human world.

Do not think that you must fight like Bastian Balthazar Bux fought. Perhaps you will. But perhaps you and Fantastica have a different story to tell together.

Here is something that is known very well to storytellers: people who never cared have never seen Fantastica - not in any of its many, many forms - and they are the people who hurt the human world. They have no stories and no names to give to the world. They will never know the Childlike Empress, who is Calliope, and Saraswati, and Titania, and Gleti, and Brigid and Rhiannon and Moon Child. The Childlike Empress might have any name at all, and if you are someone who cares for even one thing in the world, perhaps one day you might give her one.

Years before Bastian Balthazar Bux came to Fantastica - or years after, it is all the same in Fantastica - there were other travellers who were just as renowned. This is a tale of a girl from a seaside town in Maine, who once told stories to Falkor and Atreyu at the very top of the tallest peak in the Frostrim Mountains, and she had all kinds of adventures. This is the story of one of her first. You might know her by her married name, if you have found her stories yourself. But back then, she was Jessica MacGill, and her Childlike Empress was named Fairy Rose, because Jessica was quite small and enjoyed fairy tales when she first came to Fantastica. Later she called the Empress just Rose, because that suited her, and was much more sensible besides.

Jessica was born very sensible, but was never quite sensible enough for her teachers. (When Jessica grew up to be a teacher herself, she was always careful not to insist on too much Sensibleness.) She had a love of stories and of True Stories, the kind of stories where she could find Fairy Rose’s world. Jessica was a storyteller, and cared very much about many things. So of course, Fantastica was easy for her to find.

As a girl, Jessica dreamed herself to Perilin, the Night Forest, and out of her sensible day clothes. She climbed trees in boy’s trousers and a blouse of shining silver which could never rip. She climbed far off the ground, and swung on vines and slid down smooth flower stalks like enormous slippery-dips to splash into huge dew puddles, shouting with the glorious coldness of the water. She was always as loud as she wanted to be in Fantastica, because in the human world she was often told to hush.

Jessica grew lonely sometimes in the Night Forest, and then she would dream herself through the night under a beautiful glowing mushroom, and wake as the Night Forest withered away for the day. She dreamed herself a token of Fairy Rose’s favour and walked through the shifting coloured sands of Goab, the Desert of Colours, until she found Grograman, the Many-Coloured Death. Grograman was lonely as well, and always glad to see Jessica.

She loved travelling the deadly burning sands on the lion’s broad back, grinning fiercely into his many-coloured mane. She insisted that he was not call her “master”, or “mistress” ever, and that he was her friend and she his. Grograman had some trouble at first with what she wanted, but Jessica was firm and she rejoiced as pride and assurance replaced his diffidence toward her.

At sundown, when they were safe in Grograman’s palace and the Night Forest bloomed up and stole his life away, Jessica stayed with him. She spent nights and nights drinking from his fire and whispering new stories into his stone ear.

Jessica loved him fiercely, and he was the first person she’d ever met besides Fairy Rose who took her absolutely seriously. In the human world, it was difficult to be taken seriously when you were a nine year old girl, and she found it terribly unfair.

With Grograman, she discussed wishes and wants and Fantastica and what it was like being a human, and how Grograman came to be so lonely. Jessica, as anyone who has ever met her will tell you, had a strong will and rarely had any trouble knowing what she really and truly wanted. At least, that was the way she was at nine years of age. It wasn’t always so, later on, because such is growing up.

One night, as Jessica slept against Grograman’s stone paw and a pillow from the bed chamber, there was a great booming crash. It was deep in the night, at the time when the Night Forest usually muffled outside noises, and so the crash woke Jessica up right away. She got up and listened, but she heard nothing more.

Jessica was firm with herself, and did not go back to curling up at Grograman’s feet. Perhaps someone needed her help outside. Besides, Jessica had never been able to leave a mystery unsolved. She left the palace and went out into the Night Forest to look for the source of the crash. It had sounded a long way off, so Jessica climbed the tallest tree she could find, her unrippable silver blouse buttoned securely around her. She climbed far above the other treetops around her and sat in the swaying high branches, looking out over the luminous Night Forest.

At first she could see nothing but the Forest itself, which was moving like a strange sea in the night breeze. But then she saw a place where some of the trees seemed to have been knocked down in a ring, and a small cloud of shining leaf-mould floated in the air, perhaps disturbed when the trees fell. Jessica climbed down the tree as fast as she could, until she reached a height where she could use the vines to swing herself in the direction she wanted to go. (Jessica was quite proud of her vine-swinging, even if her brothers in the human world would never let her play in the ropes of their tree house.)

She came to the place where the trees were knocked down, after only one climb back up a tall tree to check her direction. She was proud of that, too. The Forest just there was a mess of snapped branches, tangled vines and leaves strewn everywhere. Nothing was moving.

Jessica climbed carefully through the branches and leaves, glad of her unrippable blouse when she got tangled in the vines and tripped. There was something there, caught in a great mess of vines. Whatever it was must have been wrapped in them as it fell through the Forest. Jessica cautiously pushed aside the thick, spongy plants and saw that there was an enormous rounded shape nestled inside. It didn’t seem hot, or acidic, or terribly magic, or likely to disappear and take her with it - Jessica had had some odd experiences in Fantastica - so she kept on pushing away the vines until she had uncovered all of it.

It seemed to be an egg, half as long as Jessica and bigger around than her arms could reach. It was a pale pearly pink colour that shimmered in the faint light of the Night Forest. It didn’t seem to have been harmed by its fall through the branches, having both wrapped itself in vines and landed on a huge luminous mushroom, which cushioned its fall. Jessica couldn’t think how it had come to be there, or how it hadn’t broken. It seemed extraordinarily lucky.

Jessica couldn’t see how she could move the egg by herself, and she didn’t want to leave it alone. It might be in danger, or it might be dangerous. She set herself to wait for dawn, when Grograman could help her. But first of all, she spoke firmly to Fantastica, her hand on the Childlike Empress’ charm.

“In the name of Fairy Rose, the Childlike Empress, this egg is under my protection, and so is whatever is inside it. Neither Goab nor Grograman the Many-Coloured Death may harm it, unless I remove my protection.” Jessica thought for a moment and added, “Also, it or whatever is inside it may not harm Grograman.” She believed in covering all bases.

The key to such things was to be absolutely certain that Fantastica would change itself as she wished, and so Jessica didn’t think on it any more. She settled her back against the soft stalk of a toadstool and waited for the sky to lighten.

When the toadstool began to crumble to sand and the trees to come crashing down around her, Jessica shielded the egg as best as she could. The mushroom it sat on turned to turquoise sand and rose up in a hill. Jessica and the egg tumbled down into a valley between the turquoise hill and the canary yellow one next to it. She wondered whether she ought to climb back up so that Grograman could spot her more easily, but she was afraid that the shifting sands might cover the egg when her eyes were elsewhere. She stayed in the valley and hoped Grograman would come quickly, before the sun got too high in the sky. She hadn’t thought to bring any of the fire-water with her, or her wide desert hat either.

Luckily, Grograman took no time at all to come over the turquoise hill, looking like a worried ball of blue-green fire and carrying her hat and fire-water bottle in a pouch around his neck. “Jessica!” he cried, running down to her. “I thought that something had happened, or that you’d decided to leave in the night. My first … my old master did.”

“I’m sorry, Grograman,” said Jessica. “I heard a noise in the Forest, and I went out to see what it was. I found this. What do you suppose it is?”

Grograman looked at the egg, which seemed to be enjoying the heat of the sands. “It is a luck dragon’s egg! I have not seen one in many, many years. My desert’s heat is good for them, but they must leave the desert before they hatch or the young luck dragon will die from my magic. It takes someone very lucky to come into my desert without my noticing and take the eggs away.”

Jessica was thrilled. She had met Falkor only once, the first time she’d come to Fantastica. She’d hoped ever since to see him again, although she thought loyally that riding on Grograman’s back was just as grand as it was to fly with Falkor.

“Grograman, I have commanded that neither you nor your magic can harm this egg or whatever is inside it, and it cannot harm you, unless I remove my protection. Might the baby luck dragon hatch in your palace?”

Grograman shook his great head. “That would save the luck dragon from my magic, but it would still die here in the desert once it has hatched. Luck dragons are made of fire and air. The desert is good for its fire, but the air here is too heavy for it to learn to fly. It will need to be taken to the Frostrim Mountains, where its kind come from.”

Jessica couldn’t let a luck dragon die, but she didn’t know how she could help the egg. The Frostrim Mountains sounded far away. “How long until it hatches, Grograman?”

“Four weeks, perhaps,” he said gravely. “Come. Put on your hat and drink a little, and we will bring the egg back to the palace.”

Although the egg was enormous, it turned out to be extremely light. Jessica found that she could have picked it up easily, if only its size did not prevent her. She was just able to stretch her arms around it and lift it long enough to balance it on Grograman’s broad back as he knelt for her, then hold it steady with one hand as she climbed onto his back. They rode back to the palace very slowly, so that they would not jostle the egg.

Jessica made a nest for the egg in the vermilion sands just outside the doors to Grograman’s palace. She used blankets that she found in other disused bed chambers and piled them around the egg, and then she dragged five tall chairs down the staircases and through the passages until she could place them in a ring around the blanket nest. Now she could find where the egg was if it were buried in the sands during the day. The luck dragon egg seemed to nestle into the fiery hot sands on which it lay.

Every evening, Jessica and Grograman carefully carried the egg into the palace and placed it gently on a pile of blankets. Every morning Jessica remade the blanket-and-chairs nest and they carried the egg back outside to bask in the desert. The egg slowly began to shimmer more and more, and Grograman said that meant the baby luck dragon inside was happy and growing.

The day came when Grograman sat down and looked seriously at Jessica from his many-coloured eyes.

“My friend,” he said, and he said it with pride in himself and in Jessica. “My friend, you must leave me now, and find the next part of your story. Here in my desert we have done many things and spoken many dreams, but our time together is done. You must take the luck dragon’s egg and help it find its own kind.”

Hearing this, Jessica felt cold even in the burning desert, and she had to stop herself from crying. “But Grograman, you’re my best friend! And you’ll be lonely without me.” Her voice was very small, which was not at all like her.

Grograman looked gravely back at her, and said, “Oh, my friend, I will miss your company. But I would be a poor friend indeed - and to my only friend in the world! - if I were to keep you here for all of your life. And there is the luck dragon to think of. They are few in the world, and it would not be right for this one to perish.”

Jessica saw that he was right, but her heart was heavy to think of Grograman’s lonely life with no other living thing to speak to. Then she remembered that she was a storyteller, and in Fantastica that is a thing not to be trifled with.

“Grograman,” she said, “When I first came to Fantastica and met Fairy Rose at the Ivory Tower, Atreyu told me of a fearsome beast he had seen in the Dead Mountains. It was a lion almost as large as you are, with a mane of black flame. Its roar shook the mountains and boulders tumbled down. Its paws marked the rock where it passed, and its breath was fire. Atreyu said it was a deadly beast indeed.

“The beast’s name is Randor, the Scourge of Lies. He was cursed long ago by a werewolf named Gmork and can never leave the Dead Mountains until a friend honest and true walks beside him. Gmork had to curse him, because Randor cannot ever be killed. It is his special power. But he is so fearsome and so mad with loneliness that he kills or hides from anyone who approaches him, according to his whim.”

At this, Grograman sat down in the ultramarine sand and looked sad. “What a poor beast,” he said. “I can well imagine what his life is, and he has not even his life’s purpose to console him, as I do.”

Jessica nodded sadly. She felt badly for poor Randor as well. “Grograman, if it were not for your desert and your fire, the Night Forest would overtake all of Fantastica. It would grow and grow, and in very little time there would be no Dead Mountains or Ivory Tower or Swamp of Sadness. There would only be Perelin, and nowhere for anyone to live.”

She reached into the pocket of her boy’s trousers, and drew out a long, fine gold chain. “So your desert travels with you, and your magic is death to all living things. But I have this unbreakable chain, which I found in the treasure caves under the Ivory Tower. If you wear it, your power of desert and death will vanish. You will be like other lions, strong and brave, but without magic. You will be free to move at night. And the Night Forest will be free to grow.

“You will have five days to reach the Dead Mountains and befriend Randor, help him to escape his curse, and return here. Any longer and Perelin will overtake many other lands.”

“But,” said Grograman, “How will I get my power back? The chain is unbreakable. Oh, poor Randor. I long to help him.”

“Randor can break the chain, because he is the Scourge of Lies. The chain creates a great lie; that you are an ordinary lion. Randor’s magic can destroy the lie and return your powers to you. So you will have to persuade him to come with you back to your palace, for if Randor breaks the chain too early, your power will destroy many more people than Perelin will.”

“And then,” said Grograman wonderingly, “I shall have one living thing besides you who will speak to me, for my power cannot harm Randor. His own power will protect him.”

“Yes,” said Jessica. “But it will be a difficult journey, for you are not used to being anything other than the Lord of the Coloured Desert. When you travel you will be someone quite different. And there will be many things you do not know, because you have never left your desert. You will be cold in the rain that you have never felt before, and because you are an ordinary lion you will have to eat and drink. Your way will be hard.”

Grograman nodded. “It will be hard. But Jessica, I could speak to anyone I like without fear that they will perish. It is a great gift. You have made my days happy and my nights less terrible, and now you will give me a chance to leave my desert and help someone worse off than I, and to perhaps make a new friend of my own.”

Jessica hugged her friend, his ultramarine mane tickling her nose. “Then tomorrow morning when you wake up, we will both leave your desert.” She felt happy and sad all at once.

That night, while Grograman lay turned to stone, Jessica searched the palace for a way to carry the luck dragon egg without his help. She discarded a backpack, fearing that she might break the egg if she were to fall. A sled was not right, in case the egg came loose and rolled away - and anyway, a sled would be no use over tree roots or boulders. She could not use a travois, since there was only one of her to carry it. And there were no pack animals, of course, on account of Grograman’s magic.

Then at last, Jessica came upon something that looked like a very large tea cosy, only made of fine pinkish scales woven together, and a long leather braid attached. The tea cosy part was egg-shaped, so Jessica carefully fitted it around the pearly shell, thinking it would protect the egg as it travelled. But as soon as she had tied the cosy in place, the egg rose up in the air and floated at Jessica’s shoulder. It would have floated away if she had not had hold of the leather braid.

She tugged experimentally on the braid, and the egg floated smoothly along as she walked. The tea cosy was clearly made for exactly this purpose, and she felt terribly lucky to have found it. Jessica was beginning to understand that this sort of thing was to be expected when dealing with luck dragons. She tied the braid to her belt loop, and went back to curl up on Grograman’s stone paw for the last time.

The morning came too soon for Jessica. She woke before dawn so that she could watch the life come back to Grograman. It comforted her to think that for five nights at least, he would not have to freeze into stone.

Grograman’s eyes slowly unfroze and became his living, many-coloured gaze. He smiled in his way when he saw that Jessica had found the tea cosy. “Yesterday I would have said I was certain I no longer had any egg carriers in my palace, but luckily you have found one. Your journey will be much easier now, and the luck dragon will be kept warm inside it.”

As Grograman prepared himself to leave his kingdom, Jessica filled several bottles with Grograman’s fire-water, and packed some dried fruits from the Night Forest. She put her wide desert hat on her head, and she was ready for her journey. She was surprised to find that was looked forward to discovering new parts of Fantastica, even as she was a little afraid, and sad to leave Grograman.

When he led the way out of the palace doors, Jessica made sure the tea cosy was tightly secured to her belt loops, and left the craggy ruins for the last time.

Jessica climbed aboard Grograman’s back, and without needing to speak to one another, they sped away, burning Perelin away as they passed. And when Perelin was no more for another day, and the coloured sands stretched horizon to horizon, Jessica slid from Grograman’s back and hugged him tightly.

“Goodbye, my friend. Good luck. Please send word to me when you can.”

Grograman reached into the pouch he carried about his neck, and held out a shining golden quill. “Jessica, my friend, you have the gift of seeing True Stories, and the truth in every story. This quill can never write lies. And so, if you use it, you can never tell lies to yourself. The other thing you must never do is give it away, except to a person who is a true friend to your heart.”

Jessica took the beautiful quill and touched the smooth shining feather. She stowed it carefully in her travelling bag. “Thank you, Grograman. This is a wonderful gift.”

Then Jessica looped the gold chain around Grograman’s neck, and it sank into his thick mane. She could see he would never get it off on his own. As she watched, his fur and mane settled into the golden sandy colour she generally thought of lions as being, and his eyes seemed less fierce. He was the Many-Coloured Death no more.

Then they took their reluctant leave of one another, and went their separate ways. Jessica and the luck dragon egg went in one direction, and Grograman, ordinary lion, went another.

Grograman had many strange adventures on his way to rescue Randor, the Scourge of Lies. But that is a story for another time.

And Jessica had many trials to overcome before she could bring the luck dragon egg safely to the Frostrim Mountains, and she had many more adventures as well when the young dragon was hatched and began to fly. She was, as you can imagine, very fond of Jessica. But, dear reader, that too is a story for another time.

For now, reader, think on Jessica Fletcher, who grew up kind and very truthful, and always treasured her shining quill no matter how much she came to prefer her typewriter.


End file.
